God Rest Ye
by Hunsdon
Summary: " 'You do know what night off means, Beckett' She smiles and says nothing. She doesn't tell him that she has to do something. He knows already. He knows it's been years since the evening was hers. The next day. It's been years , and even New York slows to a crawl. She doesn't know what she'll do." Three-shot, set Christmas 2009, just after "The Fifth Bullet" (2x11). COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

Title: God Rest Ye

WC: ~1600, this chapter

Summary: " 'You do know what night off means, Beckett?' She smiles and says nothing. She doesn't tell him that she has to do something. He knows already. He knows it's been years since the evening was hers. The next day. It's been years , and even New York slows to a crawl. She doesn't know what she'll do."

A/N: This should be a three-shot. It's set Christmas 2009, just after "The Fifth Bullet" (2 x11).

* * *

><p>It's a fluke. An honest-to-whatever roll of the dice that leaves her at loose ends, and it's terrible. It's <em>terrible. <em>Not just for her, but for the rag-tag crew that has nothing better to do than keep watch. Nowhere else to be, and her mouth opens on the words, but they won't come.

It's _Christmas_.

It's Christmas, and Montgomery's ordered her off the premises long before her shift really ends.

"Get gone, Detective."

He winds his scarf around his neck—a garish, aggressively seasonal gesture, complete with blinking lights around the border—and pointedly waits until Kate gathers up her own things. Coat and scarf and her oversized shoulder bag, stuffed tight. The Captain frowns at that.

"You do know what 'night off' means, Beckett?"

She smiles and says nothing. She doesn't tell him that she has to do _something. _ He knows already. He knows it's been years since the evening was hers. The next day. It's been years , and even New York slows to a crawl. She doesn't know what she'll do. Laundry from her locker. From the emergency all-nighter drawer in her desk. Errands, she supposes. She'll sort things for errands, anyway. Things to do the day after tomorrow, because everything shuts down and she hasn't had to think about this _ever. _

She keeps watch. She's supposed to keep watch.

Montgomery is waiting. He's jamming his thumb on the elevator down button. He's grousing into the phone wedged awkwardly between shoulder and and chin and giving her a heavy look.

"I'm in the car, Evelyn. Half an hour."

The lie is for her. It's for Kate, and it works. She knows it's an optimistic ETA. That he must already be late. It hurries her steps. It keeps her from making another sweep of the bullpen. Of any plausible unit or outpost that might have someone who wants badly to be elsewhere tonight.

_Anywhere but here. _

She resigns herself to it. Sighs inwardly and conjures up something like a smile as she goes shoulder to shoulder with her skipper, flickering her fingers at the chorus of non-denominational greetings that slip through the closing elevator doors.

_Here,_ she thinks.

The precinct. It's the only anywhere she knows how to be.

* * *

><p>The Captain offers her a lift. She's half afraid he'll insist, even though it makes no sense at all. She lives the other way entirely, but he might insist.<p>

"You'll never get a cab, Beckett." He eyes up the filthy, thigh-high walls of solid snow the plows have pushed against the curbs.

"Subway, Captain." She manages a grin. "Quality time with the best the city has to offer."

His phone flares. She sees a few millimeters of light peeking out of his pocket, even though he brings his thumb down on the button quickly enough. Evelyn again, or one of the girls. Beckett breathes a sigh of relief as he looks from the now-dark phone to her again. "Subway it is Detective. But no working."

She holds up her fingers in a Scout's Honor gesture. "Not even if there's a murder right in front of me."

Montgomery chuckles. "That's what I like to hear."

She turns one way. He turns the other, but the corner pulls him back around. "Take some time, Beckett. Whatever it is you . . . just take the time."

He's gone, then. He's around the corner and out of sight long before the faint _thank you_ makes its way into the world. Choked gratitude. He may have banished her. He may have forbade her to keep watch tonight, but at least he didn't wish her anything at all.

* * *

><p>She doesn't take the subway. She lingers at the mouth of the station, holding her bag across her chest and twisting out of the way as a trickle of people comes and goes. Rushing or reeling, staggering or wandering without purpose, none of them lingers like she does.<p>

She feels apart from it. From all these people walking in the world, and she can't bear the thought of descent, somehow. Down and over and up again. Up to her bare, empty apartment. She turns her back on the steps leading down and hikes her scarf higher around her ears.

The wind gusts from time to time. It peppers her cheeks with a gritty spray swept off newspaper boxes and the roofs of cars that haven't moved since the storm hit days ago. It sets parking tickets and hand bills flapping. It drives her along.

She's not really dressed for this, and she can't remember why. She's disoriented, all of a sudden. She hasn't been home in a day or two, but it hasn't been _that _long. The bag is heavy on her shoulder and she remembers that's part of it. It's been busy all month. All the way up to the last few days when the snow roared in and slowed everything to a crawl. Traffic and violence alike winding down. Keeping pace with the city.

She remembers. Her laundry pile has grown to terrifying proportions, and she'd had to reach far back into the closet yesterday. Or maybe the day before that. It's something to do. Taking things in hand. She thinks of all there is to do. She feels the hours fill up. The next and the next, filling up.

It should be a relief. A welcome alternative to time gaping empty when she doesn't know how to do this. She's never had to know how, and this is something. It should hasten her steps. It should tug her along, brisk and purposeful. It should write the to-do list in the back of her mind as she hurries toward warmth and rest and a solid door bolted behind her. A solid door between her and this day and the next.

It's not a relief, though. It doesn't hasten her steps. It stalls her. It makes her feet heavy, and she feels the strap of her bag digging unkindly into her shoulder. It brings her to an abrupt halt while the world goes on.

It's Christmas and she doesn't know how to do this. Still, she stops.

The wind carries the off-kilter clang of bells to her. It carries the scent of evergreen wound all around the lamp posts. The lights around every window chase over the swells of snow packed tight around fire hydrants and car tires. They chase over it all. They hide the dirt and cold and turn it all into something so beautiful she's almost smiling.

Her name reaches her, then. Just barely over the traffic and the bell ringers and everything. It just barely reaches her, and it's so unlikely that it pulls her around, the almost-smile still on her face.

"Beckett?"

It's a question this time. It's surprised and too loud. It startles her. It startles him into motion. He closes the gap between them with his head down and long strides. She jerks back. It's reflex. Instinct. It's just that, but he pulls up short. His spine goes stiff and his mouth is a straight line. It's abrupt and terrible.

"Sorry," he mutters and turns as if to go. As if he means to go without another word. As if this isn't the strangest thing in the world.

"Castle."

She takes a lurching step after him. She forgets the bag on her shoulder. It tumbles down her arm, catching heavily just below her elbow. It's painful enough to jerk her arm straight. The bag falls the rest of the way, the unzipped top of it gaping open, spilling everything on to the sidewalk. The tight rolls of clothing unfurl. Fabric goes dark at the edges as half-melted puddles of snow and salt lick at it.

He snatches at the light-colored things first. Socks in one hand and a sports bra before she can get to it. Something else that she can't see at all because she's too busy blushing furiously down at the sidewalk.

"Oh," he says blankly. "Oh."

It's so flat—so unlike him—that it makes her look up.

"Oh," she says. Just as flat. He still has a fist full of things that make her want to pry up a sewer grate and disappear, but that's not the worst of it.

His chest is draped in crumpled, stained white. Her blouse, spread across it like a sad, shameful flag. He looks up at her, sheepish and appalled and closer to tongue tied than she's ever seen him. "I guess . . . I guess I ruined this twice."

She laughs. He doesn't, quite, but cracks a smile at least. A kind of smile, anyway.

"Castle, what are you even . . ."

"Beckett, shouldn't you be . . ."

They stop at the same time. Awkward silence falls.

"Can I . . ."

He can't quite make it through whatever he was going to say. He rocks back on to his heels, letting the coffee-stained blouse fall on to his thighs. He steadies himself with a hand to the ground and looks her up and down. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and she's stupidly grateful that for once, he seems as embarrassed as she is.

He pushes to his feet, though. He tucks the bundle of things under his arm and extends his free hand down to her, gulping a little. Swallowing hard before he speaks. "I could use a drink."

The ground is cold and terrible. The world is hard beneath her knees. The street is loud and the lights are garish. She can't think how any of it looked beautiful just a minute ago. She reaches up, surprised at the warmth of his fingers when they fold around hers. Surprised how small her hand looks in his. Surprised to hear the quiet words coming from her own mouth, and more surprised still to find they're true.

"I could use the company."

* * *

><p>AN: Challenging myself to have the rest up before midnight CST, though it just sprang up out of nowhere.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: God Rest Ye, Ch. 2

WC: ~1400, this chapter; ~3000 so far.

Summary: " 'None of this is how it works between them. They don't run into each other on Christmas Eve in a city of eight million. He doesn't duck the two of them into the nearest likely-looking bar while she shoves her unmentionables as deep back in the bag as they'll go, her cheeks burning all the while. She doesn't admit she's lonely, and he doesn't sit there beside her, staring straight ahead and not saying a word."

A/N: Three-shot set Christmas 2009, just after "The Fifth Bullet" (2 x11).

* * *

><p>Castle is silent. They're both silent. None of this is how it works between them.<p>

They don't run into each other on Christmas Eve in a city of eight million. He doesn't duck the two of them into the nearest likely-looking bar while she shoves her unmentionables as deep back in her bag as they'll go, her cheeks burning all the while. She doesn't admit she's lonely, and he doesn't sit there beside her, staring straight ahead and not saying a word.

It's a while before the bartender makes his way over to them, though the place isn't crowded by any means. She finally flags the man down, more than a little annoyed that Castle doesn't seem inclined to do it. He's the one who asked, isn't he? The bartender arrives like he's doing someone a favor. Any hopes Kate might have had for sparkling conversation from that quarter are dashed by the grudging lift of his chin.

Castle gestures for her to order. He nods when she does and holds up two fingers, even though Kate's pretty sure he wasn't listening. The odd look he gives the rocks glasses when the bartender sets them down confirms it, though he reaches for one anyway. He clicks his glass wordlessly against hers and winces as he downs half of it in one swallow.

She's the one staring now. Watching him sidelong, then openly. Wondering about all this silence and how long it can possibly go on. She's caught up in it, then caught out. The bartender stands by expectantly. It's not the kind of place where they'll run you a tab, apparently. Castle digs in his pocket, then passes a thick-looking stack of bills across the bar. He waves off the bartender and his raised eyebrow.

"Castle . . ." She's more than a little annoyed now. Needing a drink is one thing. Buying her one without so much as a sheepish look is something else entirely. "What do I owe . . .?"

She leans awkwardly to one side, trying to snag her bag on the floor. She overbalances. She's toppling, he catches her by the elbow. He compensates none too carefully, like he's only half paying attention. She slides forward on the stool now. She stamps one foot to the floor at the very last second. It's all that keeps her from spilling into his lap entirely. She backpedals and wonders just how hard it's possible to blush without passing out from lack of blood any place in her body other than her cheeks.

Castle doesn't seem to notice. "Nothing," He says to the pale skin of her forearm as he tugs it closer to him. Closer to the oily light of the candle burning on the bar top. He runs his thumb impossibly gently over the raised, angry oblong where the bag bit into her arm.

"Castle!"

She says it sharply enough that he drops her arm immediately. He looks away and back again, not quite fast enough to hide the flash of hurt. The flash of confusion, like he's not quite sure where he is or how the two of them got there.

"Nothing," he says again. He gives her a terrible imitation smile. He knocks her bag with the salt-stained toe of his shoe. She expects a joke about dry cleaning. About her not-so-fresh sports bra. She expects _something_, but he deflates. He turns back to the bar. "You don't owe me anything, Beckett."

* * *

><p>The silence falls again, thick and heavy and strange. He nurses the second half of his drink. He mutters something once about it being good, but he gives lie to it every time he takes another sip and the corners of his mouth peel back into a grimace. It's <em>not <em>good. No one knows that better than her, and the polite lie stings more than it should.

"No big plans?" She hates the sound of her own voice. The false brightness and the very fact of it. She's content enough to let him sit, if that's what he wants. She's glad enough for the burn of liquor and anything that isn't four bare walls and the empty echo of her apartment.

She's not one to talk just for the sake of it. That's him, she reminds herself. It's all him. "You just seem like . . . Christmas . . ." She trails off and it's worse than the words that just keep coming. That just keep stupidly coming. "I thought you'd have plans."

He shakes his head. He's listening, at least. She's not sure what to do with that, so she flags down the bartender again. She holds up two fingers of her own, a few bills between them. The flash of green catches his eye at last. He lumbers over to slosh their glasses full again. He snatches the money up and turns away, not exactly concerned whether there's anything else they might need.

Kate stares into her drink. It hasn't even been a minute, but she wonders already what the hell possessed her to order it. Another couple of fingers marking out the time she's bound to spend here in awkward silence. She thinks about knocking it back all at once. Trading the burn of embarrassment for the burn of alcohol and and the sting of the wind as she trudges home. She thinks maybe she's not glad enough after all.

She's about to act on it. The sudden allure of _anywhere but here. _Her fingers hook around the glass, and she's just about to when he speaks in a voice so low she thinks she's imagined it at first. A voice so low she has to list toward him to even hear.

"She missed her flight." He tips his glass up and back. His face is neutral this time, and she wonders if he's drunk already. She wishes _she_ were drunk already.

_She missed her flight_.

Kate's stomach churns. She racks her brain, but she can't think of anything. He sees people. Women. Of course he does. He must. He's Richard Castle. He _sees _people. There are groupies and supermodels and designers and deep-fried twinkies. And it's not that she cares. At all. It's not that it matters, but he's obviously devastated and this is all just awkward as _hell. _

She can't think of anything from page six lately. He hasn't mentioned anyone, and they're friends, right? Friends or something like it. He'd have said something. He'd have bragged, at the very least, except apparently not. That makes it worse, somehow. She thinks maybe he wouldn't brag about something if it were serious enough, and that feels important. That feels like something she's learned too late. That this is the man he really is, and it's serious enough to leave him staring into the depths of his glass.

"She missed her flight." She doesn't mean to say it. She doesn't even know she's _going_ to say it and she's horrified.

She would be, but there isn't time. I's like some dam has burst inside him. Like liquor or misery or both have just worn him down. He arcs his stool around to face her and he's talking a mile a minute.

" . . .three flights. First because of the snow. But the rest of the week? That's all on Meredith. It's Meredith getting . . . she could have made the flight this morning. She _would _have, if it weren't for . . ." It's disjointed. He leaps from one point to another. It's dizzying. ". . . and now she's alone. She's in some airport hotel on Christmas Eve, because Meredith is off _somewhere_. And she'll be in a _car _with some _driver _at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning . . ."

"Alexis!" The name is loud enough—forceful enough—to win her a glare from the bartender. She couldn't care less. "Alexis missed her flight."

Castle looks up at her. He nods, miserable now, and she realizes he's been angry up to this point. Controlled and silent and furious. It's awful. Terrifying in retrospect.

"She's mad at me." He stares down into his mostly empty drink. The hang-dog expression he wears now is familiar. "She said I was being a baby."

"You are." Kate swings her legs back around to face the bar. She knows him like this. She's relieved. She half buries a grin in the lip of her glass. "A giant baby, Castle."

"Am not." Castle tosses back the rest of the scotch. "Shut up." He slams the glass down on the bar and frowns. It's something he has to fight for, though.

Kate flashes her grin full on at the scowling bartender and motions for two more. "Baby," she mumbles into her glass when it's full again.

"Who asked you, Beckett?" He kicks out at her shins, hiding something that wants badly to be a smile in his own drink. "Who asked you anyway?"

* * *

><p>AN: Didn't quite make my own deadline, but it's finished. The last chapter will go up right after this one.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: God Rest Ye, Ch. 3

WC: ~2200, this chapter; ~5200 total.

Summary: " He still doesn't feel much like talking. The truth is out. His, anyway, and they've bickered back and forth. He's grumbled at her for taking Alexis's side. For picking on him as usual. He's muttered about women and being outnumbered. He's lighter now. But he still doesn't feel much like talking, it seems."

A/N: Three-shot set Christmas 2009, just after "The Fifth Bullet" (2 x11).

* * *

><p>He still doesn't feel much like talking. The truth is out. His, anyway, and they've bickered back and forth. He's grumbled at her for taking Alexis's side. For picking on him as usual. He's muttered about women and being outnumbered. He's lighter now. But he still doesn't feel much like talking, it seems.<p>

It's ok, though. Somehow the quiet has turned comfortable, and he draws her out anyway. Idle questions here and there and the way he listens. The way he leans forward with his knuckles pressed to his lips and _listens_.

It loosens her tongue at least as much as the liquor does, and she carries the conversation for once. Most of it, anyway. She catches him up on the last few days. Paperwork and a huge thank you basket from Jeremy Preswick filled with things no one really wants. Fake cheese and tea and crackers that come out of the package stale. She tells him about Montgomery's scarf and Ryan's epic sweater vest.

"Powder blue?" He coughs out the words. She's managed to time that particular detail to coincide perfectly with his very last swallow.

"Powder blue with evergreen piping." She slaps him hard on the back. "Cardinals and holly berries and a really . . ." She gropes for the word. Takes a swallow of her own and rolls a few options around on her tongue. "Really _terrifying_ snowman."

"At least it doesn't light up." He turns to her, horror stricken. His eyes still streaming. He's hoarse with liquor and laughter. "God, it doesn't light up, does it?"

"Only figuratively."

She lifts her glass. It comes up too quickly. Too easily. She blinks down, surprised to find it empty again. His is, too. He looks from it to her, just as surprised.

It's an ending if they want it. A natural break in this strange evening. He's had his drink and then some. He's kept her company after a fashion. She's lived through most of the evening, and even tomorrow doesn't loom quite so large.

_I should go_.

It's on her lips. It's the smart thing to say, and she means to say it. She _means _to, but this has been nice. Appalling and awkward at first, but nice for a while now. Even the quiet. _Especially _the quiet, maybe_, _and the look he's giving her is a little pleading. It's a little naked and a little longing, and she wonders what it would be like to be foolish just this once.

"Another?"

It's her voice. Small and timid, but he doesn't seem to notice that.

He smiles wide. He's in motion. Chattering and gesturing all at once, like he's stupidly grateful and he can't help it. She smiles back. She tries to, but the world feels suddenly like it's tilting. Like it's moving on without her and taking him with it. Like this is the price of foolishness.

"Another, but not that."

He pushes the glass away. He wrinkles his nose and taps on the bar. He points to something high up. Something top shelf, quite literally. The bartender glowers but reaches up for the bottle once Castle slaps another stack of bills on the sticky surface. He's talking. To her. To no one in particular. He's animated . In the moment. Nervous, maybe, and it's more like everyday. It dents this quiet something else they've coaxed to life between them. It dampens her spirits more than a little.

"I can't _believe _you drink that, Beckett. Cop's salary and all, but . . ."

"My grandfather."

It's soft. She hardly hears herself. There's nothing to it. None of the usual steel beneath a quiet tone. Nothing that should pull him up short, except that he listens. And it does. It pulls him up short. It calls up that different kind of quiet again. Her cheeks burn, but the words come, one after the other, like it's her hand in his, guiding her up from cold, terrible ground.

"He'd let me taste." Her hands move in the candle light. She feels him watching. Listening as she acts it out. Practiced gestures with hands she hardly recognizes. "He'd take one of those little cocktail straws. He'd cap it off with his thumb and count off the drops on to my tongue. One. Two . . ."

Her voice fails her. The memory is clear. Present enough that she can see the nicotine stains on her grandfather's fingers and feel the burn of liquor on her tongue. She can feel her spine stiffen. A practiced bunch of her fists and nails tight against her palm so she won't shudder. So her grandfather will be proud.

"Three." His voice fills the silence. A soft apology.

The bartender looms all of a sudden. He's about to slam the drinks down. Fresh glasses and everything, but Castle shakes his head.

"Sorry. We'll take two more of what we've been having." The bartender bristles. He squares his shoulders, more than ready to fight about it, but Castle cuts him off with another gesture. A narrow smile. He tips his head to the side. In the general direction of the two guys who've been staring straight ahead, drinking silently all the while. "You can slide those down to my friends at the end of the bar."

He turns his shoulders sharply toward Kate. Away from him. Conversation over. The bartender hovers a minute, but he goes.

"Castle." She drops her gaze to her own knees. The weight of it's too much. She didn't mean to take this turn. "It's . . . you don't have to. It's . . ."

"It's awful," he says. He slides a glass toward her.

She's startled. She didn't even notice the bartender looming again. Hadn't even realized it had been that long. Castle nudges the drink her way again. He reaches for her fingers, but she moves first. She wraps them tight around the glass and looks up to find him smiling. Wincing as he takes a sip.

"It's _really _awful, Beckett."

He plays it up a little. Just enough that she laughs.

"Tell me about him," he says quietly.

* * *

><p>She does. It's halting, but she tells him. She rocks the glass back and forth in her hands. She watches the play of liquid rolling toward the rim and rights it the instant before it spills over. Neither of them drinks much of that last round, but she tells him.<p>

About the cracked leather recliner her grandfather wouldn't share with anyone but her. The way he never once let her win at checkers, and the day the two of them marched from corner to corner of the creepy dirt-floor basement with the brightest flashlight they could find so she wouldn't be too scared to hunt for her older cousins when they played hide and seek.

Castle laughs. He leans in and listens. He draws her out

"My dad." She's surprised to wind up here. The most painful part, but he draws her out. "He hated this." She lets the glass go. The edge tips hard onto the bar. It splashes a little. She jerks back like it might burn her skin. "I get it now. The smell . . . he'd make me brush my teeth."

"He had . . ." Castle hesitates. Checks himself like he's weighing something. Like he wants to see whether it's for her or for him. The writer or the friend or something like it rushing into the silence. The latter. That's what he seems to decide. There's a hitch in his breath, and it's the hesitation that makes her think so too. "Your grandfather had his own problems?"

She nods. "It's kind of a bratty thing, I guess." She dips her head toward the glass. Toward the drops spattered on the scarred wood. "Making this my go-to."

"Bratty." He frowns around the word like he's not allowing it. "It's not that. . ." He reaches out suddenly, his hand hovering just above hers. "Defiant." He says and she thrills a little. A charge thrums between them the way it sometimes does. He feels it, too. He catches her eye and she knows he does. It makes him fearless. He taps the crystal of her watch hard enough that it rings out. A single note. He lays his fingers over the watch's broad face, just brushing the skin on either side. "The life you saved, right? A little defiance never hurt."

It's a complicated thing. The words. The gesture. Like he's angry on her behalf. Like he's defensive of her and sorry about it all at once. It's touching. It's unexpectedly touching.

"Never hurt anyone?" She swings her stool his way. She knocks her knee against his and scoops their mostly full glasses away. "We'll see if you're saying that in the morning."

* * *

><p>It's not so bad when it's time to go. When they'd both rather linger, and they both know they shouldn't.<p>

It's not so bad, gathering up her stupid bag and climbing the stairs. Waiting while he winds the scarf around his neck just so. Rolling her eyes when he criticizes her technique and predicts that she'll catch her death before the end of the block.

It's not terrible, even though they're both a little unsteady on their feet as they push out into the cold. It usually would be. She rolls her head on her shoulders and feels the world spin. She's had enough to drink that it would usually be bad when the world is dark like this.

She turns to him, an awkward _thank you_ stuck somewhere under the highest of her ribs, but he's facing away from her. He's tipping one ear up, listening to something else now. Something other than her. It's a strange reprieve. A quiet moment until she hears it. It takes her a minute, above the traffic and the roar of cold in her own ears. She hears it and laughs out loud.

It's a drunken chorus. Half a dozen voices at least, but they can't seem to agree on a key. On a time signature. On whether or not it's supposed to be a round. They can't seem to agree on anything but the song itself. Broadly speaking.

"Rest ye . . ."

" . . . Let nothing . . . "

"Gen. Tle. Men."

"Goooooooooddd."

" . . . you dis . . "

"MAY . . ."

The last syllable rings out above the rest. Louder. More emphatic.

Castle turns to her, grinning wide. She laughs in answer. It's not exactly a heart-warming movie ending, complete with perfect harmonies. It fits their whole strange evening perfectly, though, even when the group stumbles into the intersection. Even when the song gives way to shouting and a shoving match she really doesn't want to have to break up.

It's over the next second, though. They're kids. Eight or nine of them, just a little older than Alexis, and it's over before it starts, really. The tiniest of the girls slips between the two loudest guys. She links her arms through theirs, and suddenly they're all dashing across the street as the light goes from green to yellow to red. The song starts again, in unison this time, at least, though they're arguing over the words before they get to the third line.

Castle watches them disappear around the next corner. Kate watches him. Remembers how this all started. In silence and fury. In the forlorn admission they've never _not_ been together on Christmas Eve before. Never once.

"What time does she get in?" she asks quietly.

He turns his wrist up. He blinks down at his watch like he can't quite believe how late it is. "Not long now."

"Good." She nods. She doesn't look at her own. It's a gift for later. How much of the time she's passed with him for company. A friend or something like it. She saves that for later and pulls her collar up. The wind creeps in through the loose folds of her scarf and she knows he's dying to say I told you so. "That's good."

"We stay in." He stumbles over the words. Looks down at the ground. Up at her for the briefest of moments and then away down the street. He shrugs and kicks at the gritty piles of snow. "Presents and all that in the morning. Afternoon." He grimaces. "She'll probably want to sleep. But after that, it's just food and movies and . . . it's just us. Mother and Alexis . . . you'd be welcome."

It's stiff and formal in the end. It's all nerves, and Kate thinks it might be cute under other circumstances. Charming if she hadn't had quite so much to drink. If the world weren't quite so dark for her right now.

He sees it. Their eyes don't meet, and she doesn't say anything at all. He knows, though, and she's glad of it. Grateful it's not something she _needs_ to say, because he listens. He's listened all night.

"Just . . . I just want you to _know, _ok?" He ducks into her line of sight. He's gentle. Word and gesture, both. The weight of his hand on her shoulder is nothing as he stoops to find her eyes. She worries she might break anyway. "Just know you'd be welcome."

She nods down at the sidewalk. At the gritty piles of snow. She nods, and he nods back, like it's enough. His hand slips from her shoulder. He turns to go, but somehow her fingers catch his. She folds his hand in both hers and wonders again at the contrast.

"Castle. Thanks."

She presses her palms tight around his. He brings his free hand up and wraps it around the tidy knot she's made.

"You, too."

He's looking down, his head bowed toward hers, like this is something solemn, but she can feel him smiling. She can hear it, and it's not so bad. This night or the next. None of it's quite as bad as it was for either of them. She's glad.

"Thanks," he says quietly. "Really. You, too."

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks for reading.


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